Bloggin' On: Odds and Ends for February 28, 2020

The Battle of the Fulda Gap, August 1, 1985. Actual gameplay screenshot from a session I played of Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm. Images © 2014 Slitherine Ltd./Matrix Games and On Target Simulations

Hello again, Dear Reader! Welcome to yet another edition of Bloggin' On, the no-reviews, no-politics section of A Certain Point of View. It's Friday, February 28, 2020, and it's a chilly day here in my corner of Florida. Currently, the temperature in my neighborhood is 58℉ (15℃) a few minutes after noon; it was colder earlier, of course, and I don't think that we'll see anything warmer than 60℉ (16℃). The low tonight is expected to be 46℉ (8℃), which reminds me of how cold my apartment in Sevilla (Seville), Spain, could get in late November or early December 1988.

I usually like to start writing early in the morning; it doesn't matter if I'm working on a new script, a short story, a review, or a blog post, but I'm tap-tap-tapping on my keyboard no later than eight in the morning. It's not a rule set in stone, and sometimes I've even posted stuff here on this blog in the late afternoon. But for the most part, I like to get my writing stuff done by mid-afternoon so I can do other stuff like gaming, reading, or going to what I call the "common room" to watch TV.

This morning, though, I reversed that order a bit.

As you know, yesterday I bought Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, a turn-based grand strategy game of World War III, on Steam. It had been on my Steam "wish list" for about a year because its usual price is $49.99, but it was on sale for $14.49 (for a limited time) this week, Naturally, I couldn't pass up a good bargain, so...yeah, I got it.

Yesterday I tried playing one of the first standalone scenarios (Fulda: Frontier of Freedom). As I reported yesterday in Old Gamers Never Die: 'Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm - Player's Edition, I didn't read the manual or watch a play-through video on YouTube, so I didn't fare well the first session.

Per yesterday's blog post:

One of my self-imposed handicaps was that I had no idea how to issue orders after the initial deployment of my units. I did pretty well - for a civilian with no military training at all - at setting my initial dispositions; otherwise, I would not have been able to make the USSR forces pay dearly for every Victory Point location that they captured. I only figured out how to give commands to individual units late into the battle, and by then the AI-controlled Soviet force had pushed past the Inner German Boundary and pushed my surviving units nearly to the outskirts of Fulda and the Main River at the far west of the map. 

Whenever I get a new PC game, I have a tendency to want to spend as much time with it as I can until I get competent at it, and with Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm that still holds true. So I figured that I'd play for about an hour this morning (it ended up being close to 90 minutes, but "Oh, well...") before getting on with the writing.

I still have not read the manual, but I chose Fulda: Frontier of Freedom again, just to see if I could do better as a brigade commander.

(Note: I did not create the YouTube video above. It is another player's playthrough video of the Fulda scenario.)

The scenario, Fulda: Frontier of Freedom posits a Soviet attack across the Inter-German Border (IGB) on August 1, 1985. My mission: to delay, as long as possible, a Red Army division's advance toward the West German city of Fulda and the River Main beyond. I call it the "Boy in the Dike" scenario because the enemy force is larger and is attacking at multiple points. The idea is to inflict as many casualties on the Soviet force and holding as many Victory Point locations as possible, pulling back to new defensive lines and giving the Ivans a bloody nose as you trade space for time.

Now, in theory, this doesn't sound too hard, but because the game includes weather effects, visibility, jamming of radio comms, and an aggressive AI,  all those factors influence the way in which your units fight, move, and respond to orders. So sometimes I order a platoon of M-1 Abrams tanks to pull out of a defensive position, but because Soviet electronic warfare efforts jam the frequencies, the tanks either don't receive the order to withdraw and stay put till they get destroyed, or they do get the word and withdraw, only to be killed by Soviet forces in mid-maneuver.

A screenshot from yesterday's somewhat successful attempt to play the game. Note the "burning vehicle" icons around Bielerstein and on the road between Allmus and Traisbach. Some are blue, for US vehicles, but most are Soviet. Images © 2014 Slitherine Ltd./Matrix Games and On Target Simulations. 

I paused and saved the game during one of the game's Orders Phases so I could get on with the day's writing, but even though I predict that the Soviets will take the field, it will be a Pyrrhic victory for them. Though I've already lost several platoons of tanks and Bradley scout/infantry fighting vehicles, the Red Army has lost at least a battalion's worth of tanks (of several types, including T-80s, T-64s, and lighter PT-76 recce tanks), BMPs, BRDMs, self-propelled arty, mechanized infantry troops, and mobile anti-air units.

And who knows? Maybe once I read the manual and practice what I learn from it, maybe...just maybe...I'll win. Someday, at least.

In other news...

Yesterday, Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss got its first blog review. Yes, Meg Learner wrote one for PersonaPaper, but I was disappointed with her review because, even though it was a positive review, it dinged us for, of all things, having a main titles scene. Seriously? To be fair, Ms. Learner says she doesn't watch many movies, and she did like it. But to be given a bad mark for a feature that most movies share is...astonishing, to say the least. 

Far better in the reviews-for-a-blog category is Denise Longrie's take on Ronnie, which she published yesterday in her WordPress blog, Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old. 

Denise, who is a poet, writer, and book reviewer, gave us a nicely-written and well thought out appraisal. If I had to choose a "blurb" for a theoretical movie poster or DVD/Blu-ray packaging, I'd go with something like this:

Amusing and enjoyable.... fun to watch....In less capable hands, (Ronnie's characters) could have been cardboard clowns. However, even when they’re at their most ridiculous, these characters remain human beings with depth. - Denise Longrie, Old and New Stories, Mostly Old. 

Anyway, the actual review has way more substance than that, and you can read the entire review at
Review of YouTube Short “Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss”  There, Denise gives readers a concise plot summary, her opinion, and a few things that she wanted to highlight. She even includes a link to Ronnie's YouTube home.

So if you want to see someone else's opinions on the movie, there you go.